The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms - Rilegato

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1846144582 ISBN 13: 9781846144585

Casa editrice: Allen Lane, 2010

Riassunto

In this profound and playful book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb presents his ideas about life in the form of aphorisms, the world's earliest - and most memorable - literary form.

Procrustes was a character from Greek mythology who abducted travellers and invited them to spend the night in a special bed, which they had to fit to perfection. They never did. Those who were too tall had their legs chopped off; those who were too short were stretched.

Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts - we humans, facing the limits of our knowledge, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies and pre-packaged narratives. Only by embracing the unexpected - and accepting what we don't know - can we see the world as it really is.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an uncompromizing no-nonsense thinker for our times. He has spent his life immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge, and he has led three high-profile careers around his ideas, as a man of letters, as a businessman-trader, and as a university professor and researcher. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's School of Engineering. He is the author of the 4-volume INCERTO (Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and The Bed of Procrustes). Taleb refuses all awards and honours as they debase knowledge by turning it into competitive sports.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Allen Lane
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1846144582
• ISBN 13: 9781846144585
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 128
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile